Sunday! A Quick Check In

Good Sunday Evening!  

Thank you all for your kind and helpful and concerned comments on my last post HERE.  I thought perhaps a little check in and update would be a good idea before things get too crazy here this week.

But first: This was our sunrise yesterday morning! I just thought that was so gorgeous I just had to stand there and sing the Doxology of praise to God! I posted this on Facebook, and I know some of you were singing along with me.

"Praise God from Whom All blessings flow;

Praise Him all creatures here below,

Praise Him above ye heavenly host,

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,

Amen"

Meanwhile, I've been VERY BUSY PACKING!  If you are just tuning in, NO, we are NOT moving!  But we are doing a major project inside our house...exchanging the nasty wrinkled carpet for new vinyl plank flooring, which looks like wood, but is totally waterproof and much less expensive than wood. I promise to post "after" pictures once it is complete. But here is how things look tonight after our marathon of packing up the dishes from the china closets, the books from the bookshelves, and myriads of other loose objects sitting around the three rooms that will have the new floor installed.

Since our son Scott has moved out recently, his room was available for the staging area...or storage  or whatever you want to call it...and by the way, Scott did come home for a while on Saturday and helped us move some things around and was a big help.  So thankful he is not too far away to still come home when we need him!!  (And just to visit too!)

Thankfully he left behind two chest of drawers with mostly empty drawers, so I made use of that space to actually pack a good bit of the china/and glass dishes from the china cabinet.

Before:

After:  (This antique china cabinet (and a lot of the china) belonged to my husband's "Nanny Martin")

(the little bookshelf on the left was built by our son Benton)

Most of the stuff from the Hoosier Cupboard (before...below): (Also from "Nanny Martin")

Went into boxes.   (After).  The hutch on the left was built for me by our son Benton several years ago. The top I use to display tea cups, etc., and the bottom houses office supplies.

And the Curio cabinet is now empty:

(one of the few pieces of furniture that we actually bought new quite a few years ago now!)

(before:)

And so is the antique secretary desk...(which also belonged to my husband's Nanny and Granddaddy Martin)

(Before:)

And the bookshelf is bereft of its books and family photos:

(Hubby and I built this bookshelf about 45 years ago!)

Before:

A LOT of those books need to go away...most are obsolete or textbooks or just books that we will never look at again, but they are not really the kind that other people would probably want either because they are a bit outdated. Many from our years of ministry. We've donated lots of books over the years to our public library and to church libraries, etc., but we still have these left. I may not be putting a lot of them back on the shelves when we are done with this project.

Oh, the Buffet is also devoid of any ornamentation:  Again, another item from my hubby's Nanny and Granddaddy Martin's home...

And the table is also bare.  Yes, this also came from Nanny and Granddaddy Martin's home. The original chairs are long gone, so we have this variety of chairs.

In the Master Bedroom (I think the proper politically correct term is now the Primary Bedroom or some other such description...LOL), anyway, we have cleaned off the vanity... (This was a gift to me from my father on my 18th birthday, a year before I got married, and is the only piece of furniture that I took with me to my new marital home.  My dad had bought it at a used furniture store and then "antiqued" it a lovely shade of green, which was the style then over 50 years ago.  About 20 years later I stripped off the green antiquing paint to restore it to its natural wood.)  I didn't take any before pictures of the bedroom furniture...

Our two tall chest of drawers are cleaned off and ready...the one on the left is affectionately called "Aunt Dode's Dresser", and I believe I've written about that before HERE..., and the one on the right  is my hubby's dresser, which came from his parents' home.

And this dresser below belonged to my maternal Grandparents, Grandma and Grandpa Tedlie.  From what I understand, they had this dresser when they got married in 1901. Yes, the top veneer is kind of bubbled and warped, but it still serves us well and I wouldn't trade it for a new fangled dresser  at any time!  The large mirror that it used to have was long lost along the wayside in one of our many moves, but it was very very heavy and quite streaked with age and much of the silver backing was long gone, so I think we kind of just left it in a basement somewhere...

And so now we are ready and waiting for the workers to arrive on Tuesday morning. Tomorrow the flooring materials will be delivered.

And we will be sleeping in the Guest Room!!  And yes, the bed came from my hubby's Paternal Grandparents, Grandpa and Grandma Steiner, as did the dresser on the far wall.  The antique Singer sewing machine belonged to Nanny Martin.  (The portrait on the far wall is of my paternal 

Great Grandma Mursch)

And we will be very GRATEFUL when this is all over and done with.

I hope you've enjoyed the tour of the family "museum", as we lovingly call our home. Most everything we have came from some ancestor, and we are very thankful and blessed to have those special treasures and history to pass on to the next generation (if anyone wants them!)

Meanwhile, we did go to church this morning and enjoyed a wonderful message from our Pastor from John 10:1-21.  If you are interested, you can see it HERE:

And you can sing along with us as we sing "Great Is Thy Faithfulness"

"Great is Thy faithfulness, O God, my Father.

There is no shadow of turning with thee

Thou changest not; Thy compassions, they fail not.

As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.

Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness!

Morning by morning new mercies I see

All I have needed Thy hand hath provided

Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest

Sun, moon and stars in their courses above

Join with all nature in manifold witness

To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.

Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness!

Morning by morning new mercies I see

All I have needed Thy hand hath provided

Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth

Thy own dear presence to cheer and to guide

Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow

Blessings all mine with ten thousand beside!

Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness!

Morning by morning new mercies I see

All I have needed Thy hand hath provided

Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!"

Amen!

The Snowbirds Have Landed! And other Events...

 

 Imagine my surprise the other morning as we heard a honking in the air, and all of a sudden these two lovely Canadian Geese dropped down from the skies and landed right on our "Still Waters Pond"!  These are our first official "snowbirds" arriving from the snowy, frigid north,  taking a little break here as they continue their flight south for the winter. (Or maybe they will decide this is good enough and stay?)

However, after a while they flew away again...perhaps to find a bigger pond on which to spend the winter. I do hope they will decide to come back as they were a lovely addition to our peaceful pond.

We were in the midst of some other projects when they arrived, and perhaps we didn't give them a warm enough welcome.

 We recently had this dump truck load of dirt delivered, for the purpose of leveling out the gullies and "valleys" in our back yard where the erosion of rain run-off over the years left a very uneven back yard.  (Not sure if you can see gullies below, but they are there, trust me)

And so, on this particular morning, when the geese arrived, we also had a man on a tractor spreading this dirt all along the back yard, next to the pond. (I forgot to get a picture of him working on the tractor, so these pictures are the result of his work)

Hopefully, now that we have also added rain guttering and downspouts to our house, we won't have the same run-off problem that was here before. And we have scattered some winter rye-grass seed over the ground, with the hope that it will sprout soon and help hold the dirt in place until the other grass underneath can work its way back up through the dirt.  Thankfully we got a little rain last night to help the seeds get a start.  So we shall be watching this progress and hopefully we will see some grass sprouts soon!

Another project that I have been working on recently was finally completed in the past couple of days:

I mentioned in this previous post found HERE that I found something that I was going to be doing as a project, but I said that I would save that for another post so I can give it more time and space...

So here is what I found:

Yes, this is a very old, faded and rough looking cedar wardrobe, that needed some "love" very badly:

The inside really wasn't all that bad and just needed to be cleaned up. I didn't want to put any kind of finish over the cedar as that would take away its cedar fragrance.

But the outside needed to be sanded down to remove all the old varnish so that a new clear coat could be put back on to bring out it's natural cedar beauty.

So here I am, mask and all, sanding away on the door...

And later I did sand all the sides of the cabinet itself, but we forgot to take pictures...

Finally this week the job was completed, and hubby and I carefully moved the cabinet into the house all by ourselves, with the help of our trusty "dolly", up the steps, and into the guest room.

I know you are saying to yourself about now, "Why on earth did she want this big old piece of furniture for her guest room, when she keeps saying they are "downsizing" and had to give up so much stuff, blah,  blah, blah..."    Well, you are right to question my sanity, but hear me out...

The last room to be set up and finished in our new house is the Guest Room. Why? Well, because we just had too much stuff sitting there in boxes that needed to have a place to be properly stored...mostly boxes full of pictures...you know...photo albums and boxes of photos that were never put into albums, but are organized into smaller tubs by years...and photos cannot be stored in the shed or an attic (which we do not have) because of the extreme temperatures. And after 50 years of marriage and 3 kids, you can imagine that we have lots and lots of pictures.  Add to that  family photos in frames that used to hang on walls in my parents' home and my inlaw's home, that came back to us after they passed on... and anyway, long story short, this cabinet has become the storage cabinet to house our photos:

We installed shelves, and purchased plastic tubs that would fit on the shelves to hold the photos. I still have all the pictures in frames that need to be gone through. I think I will be taking most of them out of their frames and putting them in manila envelopes (or clear plastic sleeves) and then storing them in the tubs...or do you have any better ideas? I'm still thinking that through. 

I must say that a large part of my day was spent actually looking through old pictures that I hadn't seen in quite a while...lost in the happy memories.  Having the photos in this cabinet I hope will make it easier to pull out an album or a tub of photos and enjoy them again. I may write more about that at another time. I certainly saw some old photos that could make for an interesting post someday...

So now that this job is pretty much complete, I can begin to concentrate on getting the rest of the Guest Room in order.  I hope to have this done by Thanksgiving...at least that is my goal. We aren't planning on having any overnight guests that I know of, but then again, you never know! Someone may be too full of turkey to feel like driving back home and they may need a place to stay! That would be just fine with me! That gives me the incentive to keep working on this project until it is complete!!

Okay, that's it for today! Now I am off to our church ladies' UMW meeting.  Always wonderful to fellowship with other women, and encourage one another by sharing the love of Christ together.  So thankful for this church and these precious souls. 

Have a blessed day my friends!! I'll catch up with you all later!!!